these do work well in my experience, but there is a tradeoff to consider if you live in a large apartment building. if you have roaches in your unit, your neighbors probably do too. if you use this kind of trap, you might attract everyone else's roaches to your apartment. it can be an unpleasant few weeks as they all stumble out to die, one by one. if the infestation is really large, this basically never ends.

if you have a decent landlord, I recommend trying to engage them first. they can hire someone to spray all the units, so you don't have to turn your place into a roach graveyard.

The large apartment building issue is a big one. I lived in a building (10 stories, 70 units plus commercial space on floors 1-3) for ~10 years. The first several years were great, not a single pest of any sort. And then the roaches (German cockroaches) started to show up.

The problem was that once they got into the building they were impossible to eradicate everywhere as no one, including the owners, were willing to bite the bullet and treat it as a whole-building problem. So instead you'd get little pockets of treatment and a never ending cycle was created.

Years later in our house we found and killed a single German cockroach. And of course, living in a city, if you find one that means there are many more. We were terrified. But after a single treatment by a pest control company we haven't seen any other activity for several years. Still have no idea if somehow we *did* only have that single one or what. But I'm not complaining.

I had the same experience in a big building. I basically rendered my own kitchen unsafe for human food preparation with all the poisons I tried, but still it hardly made a dent because there was a near infinite population of german cockroaches waiting to recolonize my unit from the walls and surrounding units.

> Years later in our house we found and killed a single German cockroach. And of course, living in a city, if you find one that means there are many more.

Being in a city has nothing to do with it. Cockroaches are social, like sheep (or humans). If you live in a city and you find a spider, it was just the one spider. If you live in the remote wilderness and you find a cockroach, it was hundreds of cockroaches.

The point I was raising was regarding the different species of cockroaches. In rural areas there are species that primarily live outside but can find their way inside. German cockroaches tends to be more urban and indoors, so if you see one you can't hand wave it away as having just having hitched a ride into your house.

I had the same situation recently - a single German cockroach chilling on the front of our dishwasher. Being sufficiently terrified by reading r/whatisthisbug and the like, I had a pest control company out the next day to treat. They could find no signs of infestation and I haven't seen a single one since (and we did set out traps to monitor). The Orkin guy who came out said it's not uncommon for a lone individual to venture into a home.

It was entertaining, though.

Traps that do the same with ants has worked for me too. Put it out, they swarm it and after a bit ... they're all gone.

Doesn't work reliably against Argentine ants; they form supercolonies so even if you take out one or two queens, it may not be enough.

[edit]

AFAIK, it's still the best way, but it's not the near 100% knockout it can be against other ant species.

Only thing I’ve had that worked against argentine ants was termidor sc. Non repellent, and slow kill time. Spray it on an active walkway, and it will slowly spread through the colony and kill them all off. Again, supercolonies, so it isn’t a perfect solution. But it’s the only thing that works for me for 6+ months at a time. Then, I have to spray again as soon as I see another Argentine.

Interesting,

Advion is what people in NYC swear by (It does the same thing)